Nutritional Science for Longevity & Disease

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. 

My pleasure, Tom, looking forward to it.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, and one thing too, that I just have to mention, I got to know Joel earlier in the year, and he’s actually become a friend, but one thing I did not know was that he lived 10 minutes away from me. So we’ve gotten together now and played some pickleball, and I can tell you one thing actually, that you didn’t have in your bio that you gave me, Joel, but Joel was an athlete growing up, and even to this day, he’s got some excellence in his athleticism because he’s really good out there on the pickleball court too. So Joel, let’s kind of dive in, nutritional excellence, can you talk about what that means? And that’s the first time I’ve heard like eating well and things like that, but nutritional excellence, like being excellent with your nutrition, what does that concept mean to you? And what does it mean to all our people watching?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. 

You know, it means that how important is it for everybody to really understand the ideal way to eat, the pinnacle of nutritional excellence? Because many people would like to push the envelope of human longevity and live to be 100 years old or 95 to 105, and in great health with their full physical, mental capacity intact. And one of the points on teaching and explaining here, is when you achieve this degree of nutritional excellence, and I call this dietary style, the portfolio of foods that have the most nutrient density and micronutrient diversity, that encompasses all the nutrients humans need, and when you achieve this degree, it becomes therapeutically effective to reverse disease. So now the person loses weight effortlessly, they lose their craving to overeat, they feel satisfied with the right amount of calories, their blood pressure comes back to normal, their chest pains and their atherosclerosis starts to diminish and melt away. It’s preventing them from ever having a future heart attack or stroke, their headaches go away, and even autoimmune conditions like multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, fibromyalgia, these things disappear with time and we can slowly wean people off their medications. So what I’m saying right now is that nutritional excellence is therapeutically much more effective than pharmacologic treatment of disease. Because when you’re on a pharmacologic treatment for psoriatic arthritis, you’re on drugs the rest of your life, and it’s well accepted that these drugs you’re taking cause cancer. So you’re making a pact with the devil, “Okay, I’ll let my psoriasis and my joint pain get a little better, but I’m gonna get cancer and die 20 years longer just to get my skin looking better.” You know, it’s really sad. 

And most people aren’t aware that diabetic medications accelerate the progression of diabetes. You take more insulin, you’re gaining weight faster, you’re becoming more diabetic. You take glyburide, Glucotrol, all these drugs for diabetes that make you gain weight and make the beta cells, the failing beta cells in the pancreas work harder to lower your blood glucose, thus failing at a faster rate, accelerating both the morbidity and mortality from diabetes. So what I’m saying is that the fact that medical care has, you know, grown into pharmacological-based treatments, has led to the sickest and most, you know, and the poorest life expectancy scores that have diminishing. So people are living to around 80, but their life is not even worth living, they’re just in such poor health. 

You know, Tom, right now that half of our population, 50% are either diabetic or pre-diabetic at this point, 50%. And we’re not seeing enhancement in lifespan due to modern medical science, we’re seeing diminishing in lifespan potential from modern medical science. So there’s so much confusion and mass dispersion of misinformation that people think access to medical care and taking more drugs is the way to get better health. And I’m saying, you know, within a few weeks of eating right, your risk of heart disease can diminish of having a heart attack, diminish by more than a thousand-fold. And with time your risk of heart disease of having a heart attack, later death, can disappear and become… And that’s the leading cause of death of people over the age of 60 of course, is heart attacks and strokes. And that’s almost all needless deaths.

Tom McCarthy

Joel, I’m a true believer in what you’re saying. So I’m just curious, why are you kind of not, maybe not the only lone wolf, but there’s not enough doctors like you that are taking this message out to the world. Thank God you are with your PBS specials and your books, but it makes such sense what you’re talking about, why is the world still suffering from all these diseases? What the heck is going on?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. 

You know, that’s a rough question to answer, you have to keep it, there are billions of dollars being spent to keep people addicted to food. The processed industry, the food industry, the pharmacological industry, the drug industry, billions of dollars trying to brainwash people and get them hooked and addicted to a highly processed, calorically-concentrated, highly palatable foods, and fast foods destroy people’s brains. It hooks them like they’re drug addicts, and they can’t even make, rationally think straight. But we have a lot of great lifestyle medicine physicians in this country, and we have the growth of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, a new board certified specialty where doctors are treating people with diet, nutrition, and exercise. And we have thousands of physicians now who have become board certified by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. 

So true, it’s just a small fraction of doctors, but there is a movement in this direction, and more general acceptance among both the medical community and the scientific community of the power of nutritional excellence. In other words, the International Journal of Disease Prevention, Disease Reversal and Prevention has been… I’ve published maybe four medical journal articles in these medical journals that specialize in demonstrating that diseases can be reversed through nutrition. And it’s no longer seen as something like far out radical alternative, this is mainstream now, you know, and now we have to get the public aware of it because it has to be, and it has to start with the school system. There should be reading, writing, arithmetic, and nutritional science for grade school, high school and colleges. I’m working on a college and graduate school textbook right now, but there’s so much, an overwhelming amount of science that supports these viewpoints, that what I’m saying right now is this information is not radical, it’s proven, it’s demonstrated in scientific studies, not just with my work, but the work of other leaders in this field of nutritional medicine to published studies, showing the reversal of heart disease. 

I published a study with over 450 people showing their systolic blood pressure dropped 26 points within six months while we were taking their medications away. So I published studies on reversal of diabetes, reversal of heart disease, low normal blood pressure. I’ve had studies on reverse, published myself studies on reversal of rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. And I highlighted, my most recent book of course, “Eat for Life” has more than 2,000 medical references. And I’m mentioning that because I want people to know that this is not just one person’s opinion, it’s well-documented and well-supported by an overwhelming amount of evidence, which is documented in that book and people can… So it’s written so lay people can understand it, they can see what happens to the transformational results that happen to people. But a doctor, a scientist, a researcher, can get all the data, all the research, all the supportive information to see that we have to change the trajectory of healthcare from being drug-oriented to being food-oriented. We’ve got to change if we don’t, we’re just suffering, and all the COVID deaths are also needless deaths. And that sounds radical too, because people are so misinformed, but healthy people with great nutrition aren’t susceptible to dying from COVID, it’s just some demonstrative of how bad we’re taking care of our health, that our immune systems are so weak that were actually killed by a virus.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, I believe in that too, and that’s such a great point, I’m glad you brought that up ’cause there’s so much fear right now, even more fear potentially then, well, in the beginning, there’s a lot of fear, but now the new variants and there may be another variant that comes out and people are really afraid. But if you have a healthy, strong immune system, like you said, you know, you may get some symptoms, but you’re gonna be fine, your immune system will be able to fight that off, so I love that you’re saying that. And also just some of the analogies you’re giving like things melting away, clogged arteries where, you know, the clog is melting away, I mean, that’s such a beautiful visual metaphor because so many people think, “Oh, my artery is clogged, I need to go get surgery, or get on a cholesterol lowering drug.” Which those probably aren’t that great for you either, right? And I love the visual representation you’re giving people. How the heck did you get started with this? I think you told me you became a doctor because this was already your passion, but how did nutritional excellence and using nutrition to prevent and treat disease, how did that even come to be such a passion for you, Joel?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. 

You know, I was doing all the reading when I was a teenager. My father was-

Tom McCarthy

A teenager?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. 

Yeah, teenager. My father was overweight and had some medical issues that were, you know, serious so he started reading books on nutrition to sort of lose weight and get healthier himself. So I had read all the books with him. I was on the United States world figure skating team, I was a pair skater with my younger sister. And we were eating healthy to improve our stamina and maintain our, you know, not getting sick. It’s like any sport, if you’re out with a flu or with cold, you can’t train and you can’t peak at the right time. You know, you have to stay well all the time. But in any case, so I started reading the books to benefit myself, I saw my father’s benefits, and I started reading a lot of literature, you know, back in the 1960s and early 1970s, and by the time I kind of like my skating career in the late seventies kind of was petering out, you know, I was transitioning into my family business, my father owned 12 shoe stores in the New York metropolitan area. And as I was gonna take over the family business, I realized I was so much more passionate and enthusiastic about changing people’s health, and the realization that you don’t have to be sick, that people don’t have to get cancer, they don’t have to have heart disease, they don’t have to suffer with all these diseases and take drugs for the rest of their life. 

And why wouldn’t everybody wanna do this? Why wouldn’t everybody want to not get sick and live life without disease and without fear? And I thought this was such a powerful message and the right way to deliver that message is to go to medical school and get a traditional medical education, to be the most effective in explaining and transforming people’s lives. And also the fact that you have to wean people off medications, you have to prescribe to, because you don’t just stop medications, it has to be slowly tapered down in most cases. So you have to be able to prescribe to be able to help people. And I realized that, wow, this would be tremendously rewarding, even if everybody didn’t want to change the way they ate. I always knew there’d be a niche, a segment of society that would want nutrition as the answer to their issues, their problems. And when I have a great career like this, and I’ve been very, very blessed and grateful for the opportunities I’ve had to affect, positively affects so many people and even work with so many people one-on-one and see this incredible transformation that occurred in their health. And it’s so satisfying to them, and to me, and it just gives you a tremendous amount of personal satisfaction. So I think I’m very, you know, I made the right decision, certainly in going back to medical school, it’s been a very exciting and pleasurable experience to work with so many people like that.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, well, you’ve helped millions and you’ve changed the world, right? You’ve helped spread the message where now, you know, you didn’t use to see vegan restaurants or, you know, healthy options even at more traditional restaurants, but now they’re starting to add it in because a lot more people are jumping on this, hopefully it’s a bandwagon, right? That continues to go on. You mentioned the food industry, and I do wanna talk about that a little bit because most people like you wrote, your first book was “Eat to Live” your latest book, which everyone makes sure you get is, is “Eat for Life.” And what most people do is they eat for taste. And by the way you have recipes and things that tastes really, really good, but people are going for the fatty fried foods, the sugary foods, and you mentioned it’s almost like a drug. I believe it is a drug, I believe, you know, refined sugar is a drug, it’s addictive, you mentioned that too. How do you get people to overcome?

Like they hear you, they go, “Yeah, it makes a lot of sense what Joel is saying. I don’t wanna be sick.” But then they go and they see something really sugary and they gobble it up, or they watch these ridiculous commercials for some of the worst, I think, I won’t even say the name, but there’s like a hamburger joint where they’re just like the grossest ingredients and they show them. But for some people it’s like, “Oh my God, I gotta have that.” And people go there. And how do you create the change in behavior? How do you accomplish that? I know you have a center here near where you and I live, where you’re doing that for a lot of people, but how does somebody that reads your book, what are some ways they can start to change and not go back? Like I made the change, I would never go back to the way when I was younger, right? I just like, oh, that’s disgusting. But how can people do that?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. 

That’s exactly what you’re saying is true that we feel that like, we wouldn’t even wanna eat those foods, we see them as drugs. It’s like, you can get 10 men to tie me down and to shoot me up with a Coke. That’s like, why don’t you eat a pizza or a burger or some soda or some pretzels or some cookies. It’s like, that’s drugs, those are drugs. And the definition of a drug, it affects the brain, you’re destroying brain cells with the flux of the high caloric concentration from fried foods and sugars getting into the brain. You’re losing brain cells, but you’re stimulating dopamine centers in the brain that become dopamine insensitive from the overstimulation in the same areas of the brain where opiates and narcotics stimulate you. So then you’re craving more calories, you’re craving more sugar and you can’t get those things out of your mind as being attracted to them so it leads to a mass addictive population that supports each other with socialization in the normalization of addictive foods. 

So they’re on every street corner, and it becomes okay to come off alcohol, and you realize when you’re coming off alcohol, you need to stay away from bars and not drink, ’cause a little bit of drinking pushes you into further drinking. It’s easier to quit alcohol and to quit cocaine if you have enforced abstinence and you’re staying away from the alcohol for a long enough period of time where it loses that attraction, your attraction for it diminishes the longer you’re away from your cigarettes. What I’m saying right now is that over my last 30 years of practice, whereas I used to wean people and slowly change their diets to get healthier and healthier, that doesn’t work that well for most people, it works for most people to make a radical change even at the beginning, and took it to cut off the relationship with processed carbohydrates and fried foods and oils right away. No fried foods, no oils, no sugar, no honey, no maple syrup. 

Use dates and apricots, and fresh fruits is free, make banana ice cream with bananas and vanilla bean and macadamia nuts, and cook a chocolate bean brownie, with some vanilla ice cream on top made of… You know, so these things aren’t as sweet as conventional desserts, but over time, your taste buds get stronger from the lack of the overstimulation. And you actually increase your ability to get the flavor from natural foods and you gain back the taste muscle that you lost and you start enjoying natural foods more. So at this point, myself, as representative of this whole Nutritarian movement, these Nutritarian, thousands of us enjoy our healthy diet as much or more as somebody else eating their unhealthy diet. It’s just took time and work to achieve the retraining, the taste buds and learning how to make the recipes. But there’s no lessening of our pleasure from eating compared to a person destroying their health with food, it’s just in that temporary period of a few months, when you first start to flip over that your real food, maybe not taste as sweetened they’re as flavorful as your old food, but that’s, you know… 

But of course, you don’t get something for nothing, you don’t reverse your disease overnight, you don’t reverse your taste preferences overnight, it takes some time to achieve that, but you’re not gonna achieve it if you have a foot in both worlds, if you keep dabbling on with cocaine or you keep having the ice creams or the sweetening, the white bread, and don’t forget, white bread is a sugar equivalent ’cause white flour enters the bloodstream as glucose. And it enters the bloodstream with the same glycemic load as a cube of sugar does. So it’s a sugar equivalent, it floods the body with glucose and it’s cancer-causing, and it ruins brain cells, and it’s linked to depression and dementia. So we’re talking about bagels and pizza and burgers and French fries and sweets, and they add sugar to the French fried batter and they add sugar to the hamburger, meat batter, and they add salt to the soda so that they make you more thirsty. You know, fast food is really is drugged up food, designed to hook people. And it’s not like you mentioned earlier that more people are in starting to eat more vegetables, starting to eat healthier, understanding what a healthy… But you know, our populations, the waistline and the growth of people’s weights have been continually increasing as a whole. So even though there’s a narrow segment of our population may have grown a little bit, the vast majority of people are actually getting worse, especially through this time of COVID. 

They’ve gained weight, we have more diabetic, we have more people overweight, more people obese, more children obese. And so we’re really committing suicide with food and destroying that… And at the same time, as we’re committing suicide with food, in which people don’t see, it destroys your brain, not just your body, as you no longer is kind, you become more narcissistic. The more you’re a food addict, the more narcissistically and self-consumed you are and less interest you have in the outside world and doing better for mankind, your neighbors, your family, less ability to give and love and appreciate the world around you. 

When you’re a drug addict, you can lie, you can steal, you can cheat for your drugs. You just want your drugs. And when you’re a food addict, your food becomes the overwhelming, you could say, governing your behavior, the overwhelming forces governing your behavior is you’re just working to get your addictive needs met of the brain. So people become dysthymic, the whole population becomes dysthymic, which means they’re no longer passionate and excited about life, enjoying the world around them, being able to emote appropriately with other people and care for people fully because they just become just work to make money so they can eat rich foods or drink alcohol or whatever drugs or addictions they’re into to continue their… Their addictions govern their life, and their life is not a fulfilled life. So the basic answer to our question is over the years, I’ve kind of been more aggressively lobbying for people to make a radical change all at once, even if it’s difficult at first, you get to that spot where you enjoy eating this way quicker, and the possibility of change my experiences at a higher probability of a person maintaining this change for the rest of their life and enjoying it, is people will make more of the radical change and don’t baby step it, never get all the way into that right groove of eating right ’cause they never start to love eating this way if they keep the one foot in both worlds.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah. I love that, that’s what works for me best too, like, that’s what I do, I go all in and even if… Again, I love your analogies and metaphors like a taste muscle. But I tell myself, I don’t even have to like the way it tastes, if it’s good for me, I’ll do it. But then eventually it tastes really good. And you know, green smoothies, for instance, you know, I started doing that like a long, long time ago. And at first it’s like, ah, it’s not as sweet, it doesn’t taste as good. Now It’s like, I would never want like a super sweet, you know, smoothie. You know, that really is what I do crave. The other thing that you said that was really valuable for me and I hope for everybody else, is you talked about like eating something and you’re destroying brain cells. Like if you really look at like a doughnut or something and you said, okay, “Do I wanna destroy my brain cells today? Where I’ll, you know, potentially not have, the ability to think and process as I get older.” That donut is going to do that. Like, you know, most people would go, if they’re rational, they’re like, “Nah, I don’t think I wanna do that.” Donuts is interesting because I used to eat donuts when I was younger. I don’t know if you ever did, you probably never did, but I used to eat donuts when I was younger. 

And a guy told me a story one time, and he said that he was hunting bear or something, I don’t know, he lived in Wisconsin, I just met him. And he said, they took a bag of old donuts and they put it in a… They wanted to attract bear and they put it in like a big plastic bag and they left it out, and they came back a week later, and he said, it was just a pile of lard. And I’m like, I’m never eating a donut again, like in life when I just thought of it like, oh, gross, like why would I put that in my body? And so I love these analogies that you’re bringing up because it’s real, like listen to Dr. Joel, if you make a choice to eat stuff, you are committing a form of suicide. You even used that term, like you’re killing part of your body, like who wants to do that? You know, be alive, listen to what he’s saying here. So let’s get into some foods that are good to eat and that we can develop a taste for, Joel. Like what are foods that you recommend? ‘Cause this is confusing too, a lot of people here, you know, eat this, don’t eat that. And then someone else will say, “No, that’s wrong. You know, eat this and don’t eat that.” Like you’ve researched it, and you got proven results with patient after patient. How should we start eating?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. 

Well, thank you for that. Well, yes, you know, there are foods that… There are a lot of natural plants that prevent disease, but the foods with the most scientific support for extending human lifespan and preventing cancer, I use that acronym. GBOMBS, G-B-O-M-B-S, which stands for greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, and seeds. And we can just talk about that. Greens, we are green vegetable dependent animal, and the nutrients found in green vegetables aren’t optional, they’re absolutely essential for natural body processes and immune system function. Even, you know how people are told when they’re, and women are aware that when they’re pregnant, they should take a pill called folic acid to prevent neural tube defects. Is there something wrong with the human species that we have to take a synthetic pill made from petroleum to prevent neural tube defects? 

People can’t even think logically the whole health authorities and medical profession have screwed up our society so wrong, because look, we’re a folate-dependent animal because we’re green vegetable-dependent animal. And folate is not the same as folic acid made from petroleum, and folic acid is linked to, increased consumption of folic through supplements is linked to increased risk of cancers like breast and prostate cancer. The reason why the medical profession and health authorities recommend folic acid is because our population is not eating sufficient green vegetables to support normal cellular development and normal normalcy in having a baby, you have an abnormal baby when you don’t eat green vegetables. But instead of telling people eat green vegetables to get folate, they give them a pill to instead, which then increases that woman’s risk of breast cancer and the child’s risk of autoimmune conditions, infections, allergies, and later life cancer, just to prevent birth defects instead of telling them be eating. 

And we’ve created an explosion of childhood cancers ’cause the leading cause of death in children other than accidents is acute blast acidic leukemia, and also brain tumors and leukemia are linked to the lack of green vegetables in the mother’s diet, even prior to conception, not just during pregnancy, and the consumption of luncheon meats and fast foods linked to autism and childhood defects. So we’re saying is we have the science. I got off on a tangent because I’m so passionate about this subject and how people are getting the wrong messaging. But in any case we’re a green vegetable-dependent animal, and a person should be having a night, a big raw salad every day. In addition to that, they should have some worked and cooked green vegetables in addition to the raw salads that eat each day too. But then beans are linked to longer lifespan, powerful anti-cancer effects. And if we score carbohydrates on a hierarchal scale of quality, beans have the most slowly digestible carbohydrates, the most protein actually, they’re high protein foods too, and the most resistant starch, which fuel the growth of healthy bacteria in the gut, which have dramatic anticancer effects. And then we have onions and mushrooms, which are incredibly powerful. Our cells even have ergo thinning receptors on them for a substance predominantly found in mushrooms that supports the cell integrity and stabilizes the DNA against damage. We’ve been designed to have these benefit from the properties in these foods that people don’t eat. And then of course, berries, which protect the brain and have such protective effects against cancer, even shocking researchers. And lastly seeds like flax seeds, chia seeds, hemp seeds, which are high in omega three fatty acids and high in lignans and other phytoestrogens to protect against breast and prostate cancer. That actually shocked the researchers. 

I remember one study followed women who had breast cancer for 10 years, and those that had just a little bit of ligament, a third of one milligram had a 71% decreased risk of dying of breast cancer over that 10-year period compared to women who didn’t have lignin in the diet. And one teaspoon of ground flax has seven milligram of lignin in it. And this study only gave them a third of one milligram, that was the wrong dose, and they still reduced risk of cancer and cancer patients by 71%. You know what I mean? So we’re talking about the tremendous power of nutrition and drugs don’t have any ability to do what food can do, they’re not even in the same ballpark. And the first thing you learn in medical school is that drugs are toxic and they work by blocking her interfering or poisoning body functions. And that they in cumulatively increased risk of cancer. You don’t get something for nothing, blood pressure medications increase risk of cancer, antibiotics increase risk of cancer. The more drugs we’re taking, the more things we do to our body and the more… You know, you can’t get something for nothing, you have to earn good health, you can’t buy it in a bottle.

Tom McCarthy

I love that, yeah, earn it, yeah, I love that. Yeah, your metaphors are so good, like they make sense in real life to people. You have to earn good health, you can’t just get it for free, right? I love that. What about nuts? You said seeds, but are nuts good for us also like almonds and raw nuts?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. 

Yes, I’d say that in the last decade, if you were asking me, what is the most impact on nutritional science change the thinking of scientists, researchers across the world over the last 10 years, it was the fact that adding more nuts into people’s diets, extended human life span tremendously and reduced risk of cardiovascular death by approximately 40%. And we have 17 different studies that corroborate that, showing about a 39 to 40% reduction in cardiac deaths from people utilizing nuts as their main source of fats. So we’re saying here, one of the interesting features of a Nutritarian diet is we’re not making salad dressings with oil, we’re making salad dressings by blending nuts and seeds into a dressing. I might use tomato sauce with almond butter, with fig vinegar and roasted garlic, or I might be using an orange with toasted sesame seeds and cashews and blood orange vinegar, but we’re mixing the whole sesame seeds and cashews and the dressing we’re not using the oil, we’re not using walnut oil using the walnuts. Not using avocado, we’re using… 

We’re not using avocado oil, we’re using the avocado, using the whole food, tremendous benefits for longevity, for both all cause mortality, cancer mortality, and of course, cardiovascular mortality. And the second most interesting nuance about nutrition that we’ve seen in the last decade with these large scale studies coming to fruition and giving us tremendous data is that as you increase animal protein in the diet, you see earlier deaths earlier age deaths with more animal protein, accelerates aging causative, but as you increase plant protein foods, it makes for a longer lifespan, so we used to think that switching animal products to things like potatoes and rice and low high carb plant foods might extend life. But no, now we see that it’s the beans and the greens and the nuts that have the higher protein rich plant foods that have more power to extend human lifespan. So great for bringing that up. I’ve mentioned seeds in my GBOMBS because the power of seeds to have the anti-cancer effects, but nuts also have these powerful beneficial effects, may be not as particularly targeted and as strong as flax seeds and chia seeds do, but still tremendously beneficial effects. And what I’m saying here is that when we’re making sauces, desserts and salad, dressings, we and milks, we should be using nuts and seeds, not oils, and of course, dairy products.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, absolutely. And I think you told me that eating mushrooms each day actually lowers your cancer risk too, is that correct?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. 

Incredibly so, so much so, if there was ever a drug that could do what mushrooms could do, they would be charging 30,000 a month for that drug, it would be the best-selling drug in the history of the pharmaceutical industry, because much from it’s like example of a study where women were eating 10 grams of mushroom a day, that’s the size of your thumb, and their risk of breast cancer went down by 64% when they were followed over decades. Now we have these studies where we have like thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people in the study, and they follow them for 20 years till people die. So we have more, you could say high credence studies because they’re looking at hard end points, not like a short end point, which a soft end point, which means we follow people for a year or two and they’ve lost some weight, their cholesterol went down, their diabetic parameters looked better, maybe whatever they did to their diet maybe help them temporarily. 

But if you follow them over 20 years, they don’t live longer, they die younger from that diet. We’re seeing studies that look at short end points are corroborated now with studies that go on for decades, looking at heart end points like age of death, cause of death and how long people are living, whether they got cancer or heart attack. And we’re seeing that we’re getting more data that’s more substantial, more definitive so we can give people more definitive advice, they’re not left in the way of who to believe, who should I trust? And I got this diets telling me a carnivore diet, and they have a paleo diet. And Dr. Fuhrman’s telling me eat more greens and beans and onions and mushrooms, who do I believe? Why don’t I just, you know… And now what I’m saying is we have a new wave of evidence that has made this hard to refute at this point, that we do have the ability to design a dietary portfolio, to maximize human life span, prevent cancer and prevent heart attacks and strokes and dementia. So the vast majority of people can live a long, healthy life without the fear of these diseases that afflict all other Americans.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah and you brought up something that’s important because a lot of people now are on the paleo diet. And there’s a lot of press about that. And they, you know, they say, look, I’ve lost weight, but you can lose weight, but not be healthy inside, right? So what’s going on with the paleo diet? Why is that not an ideal diet, even though a lot of people right now, the press is, you know, building it up, and why is that not such a great diet?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. 

Right, and that’s an important point to realize is we’re talking about short-term studies looking at soft endpoints versus longterm studies looking at hard end points with larger numbers of people. The soft end point short studies, the short-term benefits give us some indication to generate a hypothesis that then has to be proven to see if the long-term studies corroborate the short-term studies, they both agree, when they both agree, then we have more data suggest something is good to recommend. So the paleo diet just obviously cutting out refined carbohydrates and processed foods is a very important thing, but when you put where they’re doing it, instead of substituting more vegetables and beans and fruit, they’re substituting more meats. And as you increase the animal protein, we’re a primate like a gorilla or chimp, we’re an animal design for getting more plant proteins, not to get more animal proteins, which are much more concentrated, which then create a flood of amino acids in our bloodstream after a high protein meal, which then raises certain hormones like IGF-1, insulin-like growth factor one, which then promotes cellular replication as an adult leading to the replication of cancer cells. 

So we’re talking about a lot of factors, the bacteria in the human gut that developed to grow when you eat more animal products, produce like trimethylamine oxide, TMAO, which is a pro-inflammatory substance that inflames the inner lining of the blood vessels and allows atherosclerosis to build up and stick on your blood vessel walls and start to grow more. We have all the biological reasons why diets higher in animal protein, drive heart disease, cancer, and accelerate the aging of the human body. So what I’m saying is it doesn’t mean that people have to be 100% percent vegan, but it does mean that animal products have to be restricted to lower amounts in the diet, that if you choose to use them, they should be more of a condiment, as a flavoring, not as the main portion, and the paleo diets and the keto diets magnify the amount of the animal product serving to even larger portions, and makes for a higher degree of animal protein. And the studies we have on those diets now that we’ve tracked people for 10 or 20 years, show that the most early life death occurs in people who’ve magnified the portion sizes of animal products. And it’s the paleo and the keto diets in particular, that’s been shown up in the last five years to have the most acceleration, the most acceleration of early life deaths. You could say the most dangerous diet you could do, the higher probably of dying younger is to follow those diets, but bigger and larger portions of your calories coming from animal products.

Tom McCarthy

And, Joel, what do you say to people, and I know you’ve got a great answer for this, but what do you say to like, I need to… You know, I won’t get enough protein if I go a more, you know, more of the diet that you’re talking about, I know it’s not true, but why is it not true?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

Yeah, well, that’s the problem is the animal proteins do accelerate the rate at which your aging, ’cause they promote cellular replication and cellular growth. And we don’t wanna maximize growth, we wanna be fit and strong and have good muscle and skeletal development, but we don’t wanna get to be an unnatural size, either on our waste or our body. We know the shortest life span of any profession in North America, our linebackers on football teams don’t have the youngest lifespans because they’ve eaten themselves into largeness to such largeness. So when you eat yourself to largess, you’re making a pact with the devil, ’cause you’re gonna shorten your life span accordingly. It’s great they’re making millions of dollars, but they’re not gonna be around that long suspended or to enjoy their lives. In the later years. I was just talking with a friend of mine this morning, and I was saying, you know, what good is all your money if you can have… ‘Cause of what people do, they end their career at age 65, but then they’re overweight and sickly and they can’t enjoy their lives. 

Whereas, you know, especially now I’m now that I’m 68, I love to smuggle ski and play tennis and hike mountains and surf and play. You wanna be in great health as you’re better off later in your life, as you have more time and the financial ability to not work as much, or enjoying your life more, you have to be mentally and physically fit to enjoy it. What good is their life if they… You know, I can’t believe the people destroy themselves and to destroy their lives. And then there’s a link to depression and loss of cognitive function and brain shrinkage with aging that people don’t realize it’s happening as them joints are aging, their arthritis is getting worse and their backs are killing them, and they lose their ability to have any stamina or agility or strength or their concentration, but their brain is obviously deteriorating just as a rapid pace and they become… And there’s a link between processed foods and commercial baked goods and depression in a dose dependent manner. And I’m saying that the risk goes up 50% for people who have even two servings a week, and most people are eating, you know, 10, 15, 20 servings a week. 

We have gross dysthymia across most of the modern world, which means that people are somewhat have a flattened effect, they’re not excited about life, they’re not happy and they’re starting to feel ill and lose brain function and the ability to weigh evidence and think logically, and their lives become somewhat tragic. And it’s so unfortunate, and we’ve seen deterioration of the natural world, whether we’re destroying our, you know, the climate or the whatever we’re seeing that same, we lose the ability to see what’s happening in the world around us and to weigh evidence and to be able to, in our mind, to encompass enough information about various subjects because of our diets are destroying the width and the breadth of the human mind is being weakened, so they can’t enjoy their lives as much. So there’s so much here that we’ve seen we’re heading in the wrong direction, and now we’re seeing our population has accelerating the rate at which they’ve been becoming overweight and becoming diabetic, it’s actually accelerated now. And we’re gonna see so much needless tragedy around us. So obviously I am, you know, trying to do what I can here, and I’ve seen, you know, obviously you are too, but it’s a message that really needs to be heard.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, you’re doing amazing work. What’s the number one thing people can do to live a longer life? And so we talked about GBOMBS, but I think you also talk a little bit about moderate calorie restriction, is that correct?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

Yes, I say that I’m the most proven methodology to slow aging and extend human lifespan is moderate caloric restriction in the context of micronutrient excellence, which means with the full nutrients intact. And I’m also saying is when you eat enough micronutrient rich foods, like vegetables and onions and mushrooms, then it naturally decreases your desire to overeat calories. So the moderate caloric restriction part naturally takes care of itself, ’cause you’re no longer are the calorie consuming monster that you had become when your body was nutritionally deficient. It’s nutritional deficiencies that lead to food cravings and the inability to control your appetite and desire to continually overeat and emotionally overeat. So yeah, we wanna get people in a safe environment, we want them to abstain from these addictive triggers to break the law that illicit love affair they have with this self destructive behavior.

Tom McCarthy

Illicit love affair, I like that, illicit love affair that’s funny, yeah.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

But obviously here that the answer your question directly, the one most critical thing they can do is change their lunch and eat a healthy lunch, it’s the most important meal of the day. And they should have a big salad, not in a six inch super bowl, but a full nine in serving bowl of salad vegetables with a healthy dressing, a bowl a vegetable bean soup with onions and mushrooms in it, and some fresh food for dessert. And if the whole country just changed their lunch to a salad, vegetable bean soup, and a fruit for dessert, we see dramatic reduction of all causes of death, and that’s when people could do that immediately. But we don’t hear this, we only hear about taking drugs, and it’s always some drug solution or some chemical solution, it’s never how people could take care of themselves in a simple and effective manner.

Tom McCarthy

We could empty out a lot of hospitals if people just ate that way.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

And they can just change, breakfast is easy and people could have, you know, oatmeal and fruit and flax seeds and plant milk. Breakfast is simple as having a lunch and dinner, you know, and whatever they did for dinner, it it’ll fall into place if they just get their lunch right.

Tom McCarthy

My wife has done that forever, that’s her lunch, a big huge salad. And we tease her a little bit about it, because he’s so routine-oriented, but that’s what she’s done. And, you know, so I started doing it, and I’m a huge believer in that too.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

We teach people that here at the retreat, because we want them to, you know, they get from repetition of the right actions, you practice the right things over and over again, and they’re able to duplicate the structure of the, you know, the portfolio diet here we’re talking about has a certain skeleton that they can go home and duplicate. And once they got the skeleton going, they just keep it going and it gets very easy. You learn different salad dressings, you learn different works sources, you learn different things to change things around a bit, but it’s all the same skeleton that they can follow and be able to reproduce this easily at home.

Tom McCarthy

I love it. And really what you buy in the, I call it the supermarket, but you know, what you buy in the grocery store determines what you eat, right? So that’s even the first part to say, “All right, I used to buy that, stopped buying that.” That’s what I noticed way back when, if it was in the house, I’m like, oh, okay, well, this is here, I might as well eat it. You know, I’m talking about way, way back, ’cause I’ve been eating healthy for a long time. But you come in our house, there’s pretty much nothing that’s gonna be bad for you, like in our pantry or in our refrigerator. And it just makes it easier, you’re not tempted because we don’t buy it, we don’t bring it in the house.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

That’s right, you have to make your house a safe zone. You got to get rid of the ashtrays and the cigarettes if you gonna quit cigarettes. People have to go and get a construction garbage bag, and dump everything out, you know, and get out of it, out of the house and used… And, you know, obviously people need help and guidance, but with the right information, the right guidance, this is not radical, even though I, you know… It’s doable, it’s everybody else is radical. In comparison, we look radical, but it’s not radical not to hurt yourself and to self-destruct yourself, and to harm yourself intentionally, you know?

Tom McCarthy

And I love, you know, just that nutritional excellence, like in life, everything I do, I wanna be excellent or outstanding at it. I don’t wanna do what everyone else does, I wanna have excellence. And I wish, you know, hopefully by watching this more people will strive for excellence in this area of their life. Everything you put in your body has to be consumed, it has to be, you know, processed. And so putting high quality things in your body, it’s a breeze, right? The body’s like, “Yes, load me up with more of that, that’s really good.” Other stuff the body takes in, it’s like, no, and you feel it, you feel like, oh my indigestion or headaches and things like that, but we ignore it, so hopefully-

Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

Every day counts, every meal counts. Every mouthful you chew has it’s biological effects. You create who future you is going to be. But what you put in your mouth, you become what you ate, you become the person you ate. So it’s funny because you know, even children get it, but the brainwashed food addict, adults can’t get it, they can’t get it, ’cause they’re so brainwashed by their addictions and by the fact that whole society gave them the medical model, they see doctors and drugs that are answers to their medical problems, which don’t even work.

Tom McCarthy

And they think the medical problem is coming from outside and somehow attacking them when it’s really the inside, all of our cells are built from what we consume. So we consume crap, then, you know, the body has to figure out how to build new, hopefully healthy cells, but they won’t be, out of that crap. What are some great tools? So we have the book “Eat for Life” that’s available right now in Amazon, bookstores, that’s out right now, correct?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

Sure.

Tom McCarthy

What other tools, how can people access you? Where can they go to find more resources from you, Joel?

Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

Yeah, thank you. Well, on my website, drfuhrman.com, you know, I answer people’s questions and I give them more, obviously more tools and the comradery and the support. Because a lot of times, as you can imagine, changing your diet is emotional and new. How you eat as a socially involved with your environment, your friends and your life, and making this change, people need support and comradery and more help. And that’s why I started giving doing this when I first wrote the book “Eat to Live” in 2004, all these people read the book and said, “Well, this sounds so logical, but now I need some more information.” So I put together a website, people can get more information, and if they wanna obviously recipes and emergency diets, and diets for different conditions that are some tweaking it for various conditions, like people have to do if they have cancer and early stage cancer or diabetes, diabetes reversal. And obviously my mantra is, do not treat these diseases, get rid of them. Don’t treat your diabetes, become non-diabetic. Don’t treat or control your high blood pressure, get rid of your high blood pressure. 

You know, so all these things get totally well and get off your medications, because if you want this degree of protection, you’re really only protected if you’re at a normal body weight, there’s no such thing as an overweight healthy person, that’s just nonsense. You have to be a normal body weight, of normal exercise tolerance, of a normal blood pressure without medication, normal blood glucose without medication, normal cholesterol without medication, you have to be representative of excellent health because you earned it. It takes some time, but watching people transform their body, even if they’re a hundred pounds overweight, every week they move in the right direction. And as they’re moving in the right direction, they still may be 50 pounds overweight, but the fact that they’re losing two pounds week, their diabetes has gone, their blood pressure is normalized, their risk of having a heart attack or a cardiovascular event is diminishment whether it a thousand-fold, and even the risk of cancer has dropped tremendously. 

Even when they’re still overweight, because they’re eating right and losing versus eating wrong and gaining. Wherever you are, the direction you’re moving, plays a tremendous role in the metabolites produced by the body, whether you’re insulin resistant or not, whether you produce more pro-inflammatory cytokines or lipokines and increased risk of COVID, you can be overweight with a a hundred pounds to lose, but you can make yourself safer within even a month, just because you’re gonna get rid of the inflammation and be losing weight steadily, you start to fix the biological pro-inflammatory substances that increase your risk of death from infection. So you don’t have to just feel, “Well, it’s gonna take me two years to lose that weight. It’s like, give up right now, I’m just gonna check it out, it’s impossible for me to do it.” But no, you could, even if it takes a year or two years to get there, but the fact that you’re moving in the right, doing the right thing to get there, you’re gonna see benefits along the way, not only at the end point.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, I love your passion, you are a shining ray of hope, and just such a gift to the world, Joel, thank you so much. I know you’ve helped a lot of people and everyone watching this is gonna benefit and hopefully take your advice, buy your book, go find other resources, but just all the great wisdom you’ve given so far in this interview is gonna change some lives. So thank you so much, Joel, for being with us today.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

My pleasure, terrific. Thanks for what you’re doing, Tom.